During your visit to the Paine Art Center and Gardens, explore the historic Paine estate featuring a mansion with more than 24 rooms and many surrounding architectural structures, such as outbuildings, walls and gates. Additionally the historic Paine property boasts 19 gardens as well as a nearby natural area.
Architectural Highlights
The Mansion
The Paine mansion is a 1920’s Tudor Revival-style house designed by architect Bryant Fleming. In order to allude the mansion had been built over three centuries in evolving English styles, Fleming varied the house’s interior and exterior architectural features.
Great Hall
One of the architectural highlights within the mansion is the Great Hall, designed as the central space for leisure and entertainment. While such halls were traditionally sparse, over time they became more comfortable and elegant like the Great Hall, reflective of Tudor and Elizabethan styles of the 16th century.
Breakfast Room
The Breakfast Room was influenced by Mr. Paine’s vision of an enclosed porch linking the outside landscape and Wisconsin’s changing seasons with a garden-like interior. Less formal than the other first floor rooms, the main feature of the Breakfast Room is its tinted glass windowpanes with bubbles, streaks and color, created to look as if they were made hundreds of years ago.
Dining Room
The formal Dining Room was greatly influenced by the Georgian period between 1714 and 1837. Take a close look at the walls paneled in walnut and the elaborately carved boxwood and pine swag over the fireplace. On the ceiling is an ornate symmetrical floral design carved in plaster.
Library
This room features stone, wood and plaster architectural features influenced by England’s Jacobean period between 1660 and 1688. The focal point of the room is a rose found in the plaster ceiling decoration, featuring a symbol of the English Tudor family. Walnut wood paneling was left unpainted in order to highlight the natural beauty of the woodwork.
Master Bedroom
English and French furniture from the estate of Arthur Liebman of Lake Forest, Illinois furnish this room. The current setup of the bedroom reflects drawings created by the Paine’s decorator Phelps Jewett.
Main Gallery
The large gallery was designed to showcase the Paine’s art collection of more than 1,000 artworks including paintings, sculpture, furnishings and decorative objects as well as changing exhibitions. Today many of Nathan and Jessie Kimberly Paine’s fine art and decorative objects adorn the gallery including French Barbizon and American landscape paintings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Tool Shed
The Paine estate’s Tool Shed is both prepossessing and practical. Its west façade provides a dramatic backdrop for the Rose Garden, and the building conceals the Carriage House courtyard behind. The east side of the shed features three sets of doors that open into the courtyard, providing easy access to the gardening equipment within.
Conservatory
The Conservatory is the only structure added to the Paine estate since it was first constructed in the late 1920s. The exterior of the Conservatory was built using the same materials as the historic Paine architecture, Kasota limestone and artisan stucco. The main features of the Conservatory include a large skylight and tall windows.
Garden Highlights
Front Lawn
The immaculately manicured front lawn provides dramatic views of Paine mansion. Each spring the front lawn features a new display of blooming bulbs followed by a spectacular combination of annuals throughout the summer and autumn.
Shade Garden
Follow the winding path through the Shade Garden and delight in exotic plants and new hybrids. Roman Head by Wisconsin artist Leo Smith is visible from various points in the garden and illustrates how sculpture can add character to a garden.
Rose Garden
Nathan and Jessie Kimberly Paine’s love for roses is evident throughout the Rose Garden. Roses within the garden were chosen based on their hardiness to the areas climate and are complemented by an assortment of perennials. The reflecting pool, at the heart of the garden, is surrounded by Barberry and Arborvitae hedges.
Birch Grove
North of the Rose Garden is Birch Grove. Wander Birch Grove, transitioning from a shady grove of birch trees to a sunny area with a wide variety of flowering bulbs such as daffodils and lilies as well as ground covers with different textures.
Woodland Path
Along the Woodland Path you will find plants native to Wisconsin’s shady woodlands including trees and wildflowers. Many of the wildflowers are spring ephemerals including Bloodroot, Dutchman’s Breeches and Trilliums.
North Court
The North Court is a narrow courtyard that stretches along the north side of the mansion. Situated in the courtyard is Winnebago Lady, a sculpture by Wisconsin-born artist Donal Hord.
- The Paine Art Center and Gardens is ADA complaint. Wheelchairs can be checked out from the mansion’s reception desk.
- Photography is prohibited inside the Paine mansion, but allowed in the gardens.